We sat down with Anjan Kundvaram, our new Chief Product Officer, to learn how he came to Fivetran, his product management philosophy and where he sees the greatest opportunities for the company and the broader data industry. Here are the key excerpts, edited and condensed for clarity. 

1. To start us off, tell us about your background and experience and what led you to Fivetran? 

Anjan Kundavaram: The short answer is that I love the Fivetran product. I’ve been in the data integration space for many years, and throughout that time, I’ve been a big fan of the company and the product. 

At many companies in this space, you find what I joke are “Fivetran zealots” – users of the platform (or even competitors) that love the product. So, as a “Fivetran zealot” myself, that’s my rationale for being here. I really believe in the mission and the market opportunity, and I’ve been super impressed with the company culture and each member of the Fivetran team. 

I began my career as an engineer at IBM and after that, held similar roles in the data space before moving into product management. One of the reasons I moved into product management is that I wanted to understand why some of the products we were building weren’t selling. 

I’ve had a number of experiences since then – at RMS, I led product and drove the company from on-prem to SaaS and worked to get them into the big data world. At Hitachi Vantara, I was in the general management within the data and analytics space. My last role, as CPO at Precisely, was very relevant to Fivetran because it was also in the data ecosystem and touched data integration, data quality and data governance. 

2. Do you have a philosophy when it comes to product development or product management? What about a general leadership philosophy?

Anjan Kundavaram: Yes, I do. I think product managers provide clarity and identify the key problems an organization needs to solve. They need to deeply understand these problems, the “why” behind them and have a firm grasp on customer needs. In this way, I see product managers as the quarterbacks of an organization. If they have a strong understanding and can provide clarity – it sets the rest of the organization up for success. 

I have this saying that salespeople need to be selling and product managers need to be shipping. In other words, product managers have to help a company drive and innovate software by shipping products. In sum: Clarity, a deep understanding of customer problems and shipping really good software are the key components to this role. 

Similarly, my general leadership philosophy is servant leadership. My job is to help the team, serve them, unblock what they need to do in order to enable and empower them. 

3. What do you see as the greatest headwinds and tailwinds for the data space at large?

Anjan Kundavaram: Many customers are still in the process of building out data analytics platforms, and there is still so much data on-prem. Because of these disparate systems, there’s a lot of opportunity for Fivetran to move data. 

We’re hearing from customers and business leaders that centralizing information and data is paramount, especially when considering AI, which will be a huge tailwind for us. Another potential tailwind is that while we know customers are used to moving structured data, we might see customers starting to move unstructured data.

Over the past couple years, general macroeconomic conditions have increased cost pressures and put some strain on IT budgets. This means that customers might be more discriminatory when it comes to what tools they’re using and they’ll look for more value in their products. But this also creates an advantage for us because we have a big head start, as the focused, best-of-breed vendors will win. Plus, we help save our customers money.

4. What do you view as the most valuable aspects of the Fivetran platform? 

Anjan Kundavaram: Customers need to move data from A – whether databases, applications, etc, to B – most likely cloud data warehouses or other targets, for analytics workloads or other use cases. While achieving this used to require a large data team and full staff of engineers, Fivetran is the only product out there right now that can easily and reliably move data, without training and without a large data team — all in a self-service way. That’s a major value proposition for Fivetran. 

The most important thing customers gain from using Fivetran is agility. Sure, there are cost benefits that come with saving time and increased effectiveness, but the biggest benefit from my point of view is the business outcome. By connecting all systems, you’re creating unique and seamless agility to run your business. 

5. Looking ahead, what are some of the biggest opportunities you see for Fivetran?

Anjan Kundavaram: This comes back to the market opportunity described earlier with moving on-prem data and capitalizing on the emergence of AI. If a company wants to move data reliably, with a program that supports any and every source, or target, Fivetran is in a great position to become the de facto standard in the market. 

Our goal is to make data movement synonymous with Fivetran, much like how search is with Google or online shopping is with Amazon.

6. Lastly, how do you use data and analytics to inform decision-making and drive product improvements/developments? 

Anjan Kundavaram: Having been a product manager in the data industry for many years, you have to make decisions in ambiguous cases. You also have to make decisions of consequence, whether strategic, for long-term planning or related to product tradeoffs. 

I think the best way to make these decisions is to have a good set of data and analytics. 

That starts with understanding user behavior, market trends and product performance. By analyzing these insights, we can identify areas for improvement, prioritize features that add the most value and adjust our strategies to better meet customer needs.

Qualitative insights are equally important. Customer interviews provide direct feedback on user experiences, allowing us to refine our product to better address their expectations. Lastly, win-loss analysis will help us understand areas for competitive improvement.

These ingredients form the backbone of effective decision-making. They provide the evidence needed to move forward with conviction — even in the face of uncertainty.

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